Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

by Stephanie Barron

  SUNDAY MORNING BROUGHT FITFUL SUNSHINE, AND OUR dutiful attendance at St. Nicholas’s Church. There was such a squeeze to obtain seats among the congregation that Henry chose to stand at the rear, and thus had a prime view of the Regent and his brother, the Duke of Clarence, as they made their ponderous way up the main aisle and took their places in the Royal pew. I was better employed over my prayer book, and in listening to the sermon of the Reverend Mr. Michel, who taught the Marquis of Wellington his letters as an ignorant schoolboy—or attempted to do so, for there are those, including the Marquis’s mother, who insist the soldier’s understanding was never powerful. Mr. Michel spoke on vanity and the Way of All Flesh, which brought the old roué Hanger uncomfortably to mind; these seemed to be pertinent topics for the collected ton, tho’ from the expressions of virtue on every countenance, the clergyman’s words fell on deaf ears. I gave up attending to poor Mr. Michel, whose voice is decidedly thin, and studied my neighbours’ fashions instead.

  At the close of Divine Service, Henry proclaimed himself anxious to seize the sea air in a stroll along the Marine Parade, a pleasant promenade that borders the shingle and the sea; and as little other amusement offered on the Sabbath for two raised by such observant parents, I readily agreed.

  We had progressed some distance along the sea-front, in the direction of a local wonder known as Black Rock, when my name was called in a cheerful accent, and I confronted once more Lady Swithin. Beside her, elegant in figure and dress, was her lord: visibly older than when we last met eight years since, when the Earl of Swithin was a buck of the first stare, a celebrated parti on the Marriage Mart, and Desdemona’s infuriated slave. As he doffed his silk hat, I saw that Swithin’s forehead was a little lined, his hair beginning to thin; such are the wages of a vigourous career among the Opposition.

  “My lord, my lady—how delightful to meet again.” I dropped a curtsey. “May I recall my brother, Mr. Henry Austen, to your acquaintance?”

  Henry had been presented to Lady Swithin when she was but a girl in Bath and the object of our sedulous researches, on the occasion of her brother’s being taken up for murder; but he was unlikely to pursue the acquaintance once she exchanged the station of Duke’s daughter for that of Countess. Her husband, Henry knew not at all. But he bowed; the Earl returned the courtesy; and at Lady Swithin’s suggestion, Henry and I retraced our steps towards the Steyne.

  “And what did you make of the Marine Pavilion, Miss Austen?” the Countess enquired, drawing a fine Paisley shawl about her shoulders against the brisk sea wind. “You will shock Swithin, I am sure, for I know your pert opinions of old.”

  “I thought the place very grand, and befitting the honour of the Regent,” I returned sedately; “but the heat and crush were intolerable.”

  “Not to mention the better part of the company,” Swithin observed carelessly. “The Carlton House Set are never good ton in London, to be sure, but by the seaside the freedom of their manners is shocking. I’ve a mind to take a house in Worthing, Mona, for the rest of the summer; the children should be happier there, without all this bustle, and I should never fear my wife’s receiving an insult. That blackguard Hanger was mincing about the passages last night like an unholy imp, itching to snatch at any passing female. I very nearly tossed him out on his ear.”

  Lady Swithin smiled, and rapped her husband’s arm with one gloved hand. “Pay Swithin no mind, Miss Austen. You will recall he has a shocking temper. It would not do to be absent from Brighton when all the world is present—that excites comment, you know, and speculation, which should fuel the Tories’ vile projects: they should say that Swithin was ailing in the country, and that the moment was ripe to strike against the Whigs. We cannot have that on any account. But I think I should like to remove to Italy in June, as Lady Oxford intends: a change of scene entire should suit me, and the children may by all means go to Worthing, with Nurse.”

  She glanced sidelong at the Earl from under her lashes, a ploy I remembered from her girlhood. “You, Charles, may do as you please—accompany me or stay behind; but I should find June sadly flat without you.”

  Her husband smiled wistfully; his plans did not include Italy, I suspected; but he remained as enchanted by his Mona’s wiles as ever. “I do not like Lady Oxford.”

  “I am well aware of it.” Desdemona dimpled.

  “She is a pernicious influence.”

  “Piffle. You are simply jealous, Charles. She’s far more clever than any man in London.”

  “A powerful understanding, I grant you, well supported by judicious study—but I cannot like her morals, Mona,” Swithin said warningly.

  “Oh, pooh—such stuff! She conducts her affaires quite discreetly; and were I chained to such a dead bore as old Harley, I should be forced to similar expedients—tho’ fortunately I am not,” she amended hastily.

  I was amused to observe that eight years of marriage had not dulled the wits of either husband or wife; prone to argue vociferously as young people, they remained as testy in their affection as ever.

  “What part of Italy does Lady Oxford intend?” Swithin demanded.

  “Sardinia. Or was it Sicily? I am forever confusing the two.”

  “Then we shall be forced to descend upon the Lakes,” he replied. “Have you yet been on the Continent since Napoleon retired to Paris, Miss Austen?”

  It was like his good manners to recollect his acquaintance, and turn the conversation.

  “I have not,” I answered, with some dignity—never having been on the Continent at all.

  “My late wife,” Henry interjected, “was so unhappy as to be deprived of extensive estates in France, bequeathed to her by her murdered husband—the Comte de Feuillide, guillotined by the mob at the height of the Terror—and it has been in my mind for some years to attempt their recovery; indeed, we once ventured together to France to push our claim, during the Peace of Amiens—but now that my wife is gone, all such efforts must be futile.”

  The two men walked ahead a little, discussing Kutusov’s rout of Buonaparte; and I seized the opportunity to mine the Countess for intelligence. Lord Byron had tossed Catherine Twining out of Lady Oxford’s chaise; and Desdemona was intimate with Lady Oxford. I know nothing of the woman at all—except for her scandalous reputation, which I liked as little as did the Earl.13

  “You have known the Countess of Oxford some years, I apprehend?”

  “Indeed. We have been friends this age—tho’ she is considerably my elder. I believe she may be as old as forty,” Desdemona observed.

  I winced, but forbore to announce my own decrepitude. “I did not see the Countess at the Pavilion last evening.”

  “No—she cannot abide the Regent, you know; she is all for the Princess’s party, and remains in London to support her.”14

  “I commend Lady Oxford’s loyalty,” I said warmly. “I pity the Princess exceedingly; and must believe that however imperfect her conduct has been, had her husband’s been above reproach, she should not have erred. His was the poor example; his the duty to guide; and his negligence the more to be deplored, in exposing his wife to contempt and ridicule.”

  “I am entirely of your opinion, Miss Austen!” her ladyship cried, and slipped her arm through mine. “But the gentlemen will not see it; they abuse the Princess as a jade and a joke. Can any woman stand mutely by, and allow such indignities to go unanswered?”

  We conversed a little longer in this vein; and I could not help but be forcibly put in mind of Lord Harold Trowbridge, as I listened to his niece’s sentiments. She marshalled her arguments with logic and care, as Lord Harold had been wont to do; and I thought it very likely her husband’s success in Parliament owed much to the cold judgement of his primary auditor—his wife.

  “And Lady Oxford is just such another,” Desdemona concluded as we achieved the far end of the Marine Parade, and halted to observe some boats putting into the waves. “Swithin is in the right—he is always in the right: her conduct goes beyond what is pleasing, even
in so great a lady, in the constant parade of her amours. But she should not have behaved so ill, I am sure, had her husband not been so weak. He practically abandoned her to Sir Francis Burdett, her first lover, and when one is left entirely alone in the house for a week with so eloquent a man, I am sure one cannot be blamed for the consequences.”

  The consequences, as even I was aware, ran to several children—members of what were unkindly called the “Harleian Miscellany,” in a nod to their uncertain parentage. Desdemona lost me here; only friendship could excuse her support of Lady Oxford, and I had no such tender feelings to persuade me from what was right. Mona’s frankness, however, absolved my conscience of any pang; I might be as inquisitive as I chose.

  “Her ladyship is a great admirer of Lord Byron, I collect?”

  Desdemona smiled. “That young man has been practically living in her pocket all winter, if you will credit it! And he is barely of age, Miss Austen! And she is old enough to be his mother—or very nearly! It is one of the on-dits of Town; and we are forced to treat the liaison as the merest commonplace, tho’ he has been staying at Eywood—the Earl’s estate in Herefordshire, you know—since before Christmas, and has only exchanged it for London once the Countess quitted the place. He has settled in lodgings in St. James’s, but hardly dares show himself out-of-doors, for fear of meeting Caro Lamb.”

  “I had hoped that lady might have learnt resignation,” I said. “But still she pursues Lord Byron?”

  “For a wonder! I should not be capable of enduring such ridicule as she wins—for all the world is talking of it, you know. Lady Melbourne, Caro’s mother-in-law, is no friend to her; she has taken up with Byron herself, and serves as the poet’s maternal counselor—all from vanity, of course, at succeeding where her daughter-in-law has failed! I wonder that William Lamb can bear it—to have both wife and mother enthralled by the same swaggering boy, nearly ten years his junior, and admitted on terms of cordiality in his own home!”

  “Lady Melbourne, the intimate friend of her son’s rival,” I gasped. “How does Lady Caroline bear it?”

  “Seethingly,” Desdemona said. “She communicates with her mother-in-law solely by writing. They inhabit separate floors of Melbourne House; and such scenes as must occur upon the stairs I do not like to think! But I feel some pity for Caro Lamb, tho’ she has brought her ruin upon herself; she is become the most tragic sort of spectacle—hardly anyone receives her now. One cannot predict what she is capable of—one cannot know what she may do. Violence, perhaps, to herself or others. Emotion has carried her beyond the bourne of reason.”

  “And yet,” I observed, reverting to our earlier subject of conversation, “Lady Oxford is Byron’s current inamorata—and Lady Oxford is welcome everywhere.”

  Desdemona smiled. “Not quite everywhere. The Regent will not receive her, on account of her support for the Princess; and so Byron, too, is given the cut direct when he descends upon Brighton.”

  “I am glad to know that man has suffered some rejection, at least!”

  But the Countess was no longer attending. Her eyes had narrowed, in gazing at a particular boat just then thrusting out to sea. It was a sailing vessel, not at all large as such things go: but a single mast and sail, and what my Naval brothers should have called a jib—I might almost have ventured abroad in it myself. It had been some years since I had rowed my nephews in a little boat about Southampton Water. But Desdemona was not lost in contemplation of the boat, pretty tho’ it was, with its gay sails and dark red paint.

  “And so the Devil is come to Brighton,” she murmured softly. “And I do mean Devil, Miss Austen. That is Byron himself—just there, springing into the boat with a quickness surprising in one who is lame—George, Lord Byron, about to set sail. Is there not something poetic about the scene?”

  She spoke a simple truth. There was the boat: bright-hulled, bucking on the waves like a horse impatient for a gallop; and the broad-shouldered, lithe young man with the windswept black locks, his deft fingers working at the ropes. A timeless image; beautiful in its clean lines and brilliant colours, its implicit promise of freedom—

  “My dear,” called the Earl of Swithin, from where he stood a little advanced from us in company with Henry, “I believe we should beg our friends’ pardon for detaining them so long, and enquire whether they might dine with us, before the Assembly tomorrow?”

  But Desdemona was deaf to her lord.

  I was scarcely more attentive myself. For a young boy had raced, barefoot, across the sand directly for Lord Byron’s boat. His blond hair was cropped short, in curling waves over nape and forehead; his nankeen breeches were so loose on his wiry frame that they were lashed to his waist with a stout leather belt; and his shirt—a rough linen one with flowing ruffles and sleeves, that put me strongly in mind of a Gypsy’s—was so blowsy as to suggest it might better have fitted Byron himself. A local urchin, I thought, whose intent was to earn a copper or two by helping his lordship heave his vessel into the sea.

  But the lad was too late—his lordship was already afloat—and in desperation, the boy surged out into the waves, hailing the vessel in a high, excited accent, the linen shirt ripping free of his breeches in the brisk wind.

  Byron turned and fixed his gaze upon his pursuer’s countenance—and his own visibly darkened. As Desdemona and I observed the scene, his lordship’s beautiful mouth curled in contempt and hatred. “Little Mania!” he shouted. “You may go to the bottom and welcome, for all I care!”

  And he let out his sail with an impatient twitch of line, willing the little boat to surge forward, away from the boy.

  “How cold the water must be,” I murmured. “I have only assayed it once, in Charmouth—and that, from a bathing machine—I am sure it is far colder in the midst of the ocean, against one’s sodden clothing. Poor lad—what can be his purpose?”

  Desdemona’s gloved hand gripped my wrist with painful urgency. “Turn away, Miss Austen. Turn away this instant! We must not look, or I shall not be answerable for the consequences—Oh, Lord, that I had not seen what I have! That I should not feel myself compelled to inform Lady Oxford—”

  I stared at her in wonderment. “Whatever are you speaking of? It is only a boy. Observe! His lordship is waving him off! He is letting out more sail, and the wind has taken it! The water is too deep for the lad—he cannot reach the boat, and indeed, indeed, Lady Swithin, I believe the poor fellow is drowning!”

  The Countess whirled on the instant, her eyes seeking the fair head as it bobbed, sank, and disappeared beneath the waves. Byron was staring resolutely in the opposite direction, out to sea; at least fifty yards now separated him from the desperate boy.

  “Good God!” Mona cried. “Swithin—Swithin, do something, for all our sakes! Do you not see? There, in the wake of that vessel? It is Lady Caroline Lamb who is perishing in the sea!”

  13 Jane confirms here an opinion of Lady Oxford already expressed to her friend Martha Lloyd in a letter dated 16 February 1813. See Jane Austen, Jane Austen’s Letters, Deirdre Le Faye, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), Letter No. 82.

  14 By this, the Countess of Swithin refers to Princess Caroline, the Regent’s estranged wife, who maintained a separate residence and household. Such a degree of hatred subsisted between the two royals that one could not be a friend to both.—Editor’s note.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Remedy for Drowning

  9 MAY 1813

  BRIGHTON, CONT.

  MY BROTHER HENRY, I KNEW, COULD NOT SWIM.

  The Earl of Swithin’s fingers were already working at the buttons of his dark blue coat, however, and his hat was tossed on the paving at his feet. “Hullo the boat!” he cried towards Lord Byron’s diminishing vessel. “Byron! Lord Byron!”

  I saw what he was about in an instant; Byron should be more likely to reach the drowning woman, did he abandon his vessel in an attempt to save her; but the wind carried Swithin’s words back into his throat.

  Henry leapt from
the Parade to the shingle below, and began to halloo in company with Swithin; but it was of little use. The only notice he secured was that of the fishwives who gutted the local catch on trestles set up near the sea, their skirts kirtled high about their waists and their heads wrapped in bright scarves. Several stilled their knives and stared up at us in wonderment, as tho’ we were drunken or mad.

  “She surfaces!” Desdemona cried.

  Her husband, boots discarded and clad only in pantaloons and linen shirt, pelted over the stony sand with the speed of a schoolboy; and as he plunged into the sea, fighting against the waves that dragged at his thighs, I saw the dark gold head of Lady Caroline Lamb—was it truly she?—rise like a seal’s and then disappear, almost instantly overwhelmed. Beside me, Desdemona was dancing with anxiety and fear, muttering imprecations and encouragement, her eyes narrowed in a desperate attempt to locate Lady Caroline once more. I, too, was searching the serrated water frantically with my gaze; but the sodden curls did not reappear.

  Lord Byron’s yacht, taken by the wind, had moved far from our party; he had tacked, I thought, and was visible as a gull-winged shape against the bright horizon. Had he known Caro Lamb could not swim? Had he wished her to die while he sailed onwards, indifferent? Could any man—however tormented by a discarded lover—be so callous as this?

  But of course he could, I recollected. This was the same Lord Byron—the poet—who had abducted Catherine Twining in his carriage.

  Desdemona had quitted the Parade to hasten after the gentlemen; she was straining towards her husband, just shy of the tide’s reach. I hastened to join Henry, who said, “I believe Lady Caroline has been submerged some minutes. Swithin will have to dive. Let us pray he has sufficient strength—I should never be equal to it. The force of the waves! I am all admiration for such a man.”

  It was as Henry said: Swithin was drawing great breaths, then plunging fully under the sea. I had an idea of his eyes, blinded by salt water, searching the murky depths in frantic haste for the slim figure of the boy-girl. I found I was clutching at Henry’s arm with my gloved fingers in a manner that he might generally have regarded as painful, but appeared not to notice at this present; I heaved a shuddering sigh of dread, as tho’ my breath might supply the swimmers’.